Jurado and Swift are onto something in the conjunction of rough-hewn folk and atmospheric electronics, and if anything, they have gotten better at integrating the two elements into a whole.

Truth first: James Blake is not a great record. It is a good record, and maybe even a slightly provocative one, in that an album this spare, minimal, and myopic shouldn't, by rights, be stirring the pot so much.

On Time Out of Time is conceptually fascinating, playing as Basinski often does, with very large abstract ideas that seem to have no obvious analog in music. Yet the concept yields a calming ambient sonic output that sounds not so different from other kinds of music that have nothing to do with black holes.

The result is an intriguing set of tracks which sound, one hand, very much in line with Matmos’ percolating, abstract grooves, but also very different. ... With “Flight to Sodom / Lot do Salo,” the album moves into even more riveting abstractions, a sampled voice pulsing like a drum as rich textures of synth swirl around it. Here too, denatured vocals surge and fade in a not-quite-human choir sound. The second side turns more ominous and atmospheric.

The Besnard Lakes Are the Ghost Nation is another solid addition to a consistently strong discography. It doesn’t quite hit the heights of my personal favorite, Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO, but it certainly comes close.

It's not an intrinsically triumphant album, and in part that's why it's a triumph: comfortable, well-adjusted rock by and for aging erudites, a bit greyer, a bit wiser, but no less creative or inspiring.

World Eater is simultaneously his brightest and darkest album yet, full of walls of noise that could seem forbiddingly remote if not for the way Power consistently brings things back to the human experience.

While not without its pleasures, particularly in its first half, the album seems to find the Bonnie ‘Prince’ just a little too much at ease for his (and our) own good.

Backed by twinkling music-box guitars, a line such as “I knew the moment that I saw you that my life would never by the same” feels too sugar-sweet to resonate. The musical chemistry evident among Meek’s band of talented players thankfully overpowers this tendency for the most part.

Inland See is the kind of record that offers multiple layers of riches: the rich sound of the analog synthesizers, the mellifluous wind instruments, the subtle use of evolving rhythmic elements. It’s an addictive listen that rivals Totality for its elegance and depth.

Rachel’s can effortlessly create beauty, but what saves the record from saccharine blandness are the arrangements that almost distrust the group’s strengths, refusing to leave beautiful passages uncomplicated by dissonance or some kind of sonic distraction.

What makes Nothing Lasts Forever especially rewarding for fans is the emotional throughline that connects their work, album to album.

Frantic guitars, hooks that replay in your head, skeptical lust - they're all here.

Occulting Disk is not a record to approach lightly. Often it seems deliberately constructed to hold the listener at arm’s length daring one to submerge oneself in its frozen depths.

On their 21st album, Three, their usual album-length evolution is divided into three 20-minute acts, much like 2006’s excellent Chemist.

What’s left is distinctly Sunn O))) in scope and scale, as heavy and loud and intense as anything they’ve produced.

There is a coherent sound throughout the album––psychedelic electro-hop perhaps––while each song develops fruitfully without ever being dragged out.

Limitations can be freeing, but King Midas seems to tip-toe around a great deal of Martin’s artistic inspiration. The album successfully shows off an under-heralded side of his work, but it’s a shame that the sonic violence was deliberately repressed, rather than skillfully incorporated.

The Money Store is Death Grips's next move, and they sound surprisingly ready to engage a wider audience.

Like most bands, Girl Friday has never been crazy about genre labels, and if you asked them whether they were pop or punk or indie, they’d very likely just say yes. By sliding continually between categories, though, this band creates a very absorbing tension between what they are right now and what they might become in a measure or two. You have to pay attention. You can’t take these songs for granted.

It’s fairly impressive that Stars could make a record that comes this close to replicating its predecessor while still offering discrete pleasures of its own.

Even when Ejstes and his combo stretch out, they do so in a catchy way. Sometimes they do it the old-fashioned way with a big, memorable melody. Other times it is a cool sound framed just so.

Last time, the surprise was that after 20 years of hiatus, the band was just as good as ever. This time, they're even better, more cohesive and confident, louder and funnier, still learning from life and each other, and using that experience to create ever more compelling music.

It’s tempting to spend the whole review quoting Goulden’s best lines, but the songs are solid musically, too.

There's a bit of Starbucks gloss to this record, a too-easy-to-like quality that may at first put off serious listeners and music heads. That evaporates pretty quickly, though, as you recognize that its lucid simplicity, its artful artlessness is not a trick, but achievement.

Situated between his production for Common’s Electric Circus and Champion Sound with Madlib, the record scripts Dilla’s now triumphant escape from the majors and represents the more mercurial facet of his vision.

When there are fewer tracks, Anderson contrasts foreground sharpness with distant background. “House of the Setting Sun” and “Chimes” present fatigued leads pushed along by hazy, distant clouds of tone. What the new climate hasn’t changed is Anderson’s persistent restlessness, wandering off the road to find unusual details. Into the Light heads into the desert, knowing it’s hardly a deserted place.

In the end, Switched on Ra is the best kind of tribute, demonstrating a fundamental grasp of the original material but taking it in an entirely different direction.